We all judge our friends’ Netflix history. But with Netflix unveiling your viewing history as recommendations to your friends, there’s no time like today to make sure your history is impressive, educational, and indicative of the good taste you wish you had. Here’s how to craft the right highbrow entertainment for when your friends and colleagues may casually judge your viewing history:
DO: fill the history with educational programming. Make it seem like you give a shit about bettering yourself with season 1 of Cosmos, or a Ken Burns documentary.
DON’T: binge on Extreme Couponing while crying into your chardonnay.
DO: pick movies and shows with impressive sounding titles. By picking a title like Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, you can subtly show off the fact you know about exotic places like Yemen and fish like salmon.
DON’T: confuse Homeland and Heartland. One is a critically acclaimed drama starring Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, the other is a Canadian soap opera about horses. Don’t embarrass yourself by choosing the wrong one.
DO: make sure your “guilty pleasure” selections are the right guilty pleasures. One nostalgic episode of Buffy makes you seem human, but five straight episodes of Angel will make them wonder about the choices you make in life.
DON’T: include anything that originally aired on the Disney channel. This includes all of the High School Musicals, and anything with Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana. Best to just steer clear of any Hilary Duff projects as well.
DO: pick at least one “edgy” movie. Something like Blue Is The Warmest Color will remind your friends that you appreciate the aesthetics of a woman loving another woman. But too many behind-the-scenes documentaries about the porn industry make arouse some suspicion.
DON’T: use any show with ‘Doctor’ in the title. Wipe clean all traces of your seven-day binge of Dr. Who, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, and The Doctors. You can replace them all with old episodes of House.
Once you’ve carefully curated your list, you can try watching it – but if all those boring movies aren’t your jam, simply play them while you’re in another room or out doing errands. This may seem like a lot of work to pretend you’re something you’re not, but remember – your friends could dump you at any second. Don’t give them the ammo they need with a viewing history full of the garbage you actually watch.
